The requirements of the ideal leader are always changing. Emily Larson delves into the conundrum of developing leaders for a future that will have changed by the time we get there.
Disruption has become the default state. Exploration is everywhere. The lines between social expectation, politics, and work are increasingly blurred. This leaves leaders facing broader and more complex challenges than ever, all the while balancing the celebration of diversity and individualism with the need for efficient collective performance.
Through the decades, we’ve honed numerous incarnations of the ideal type of leadership for the age. Hybrid leadership. Inclusive leadership. Visionary leadership. Agile leadership. What’s next? Shifting trends continuously define new (and not-so-new) directions in which today’s leaders should be heading in order to stay effective. The latest: transformational leadership.
Defined by a focus on inspiring employees to achieve beyond their expectations and drive towards a unified vision, transformational leadership draws on traits like innovation, flexibility, and resilience to shape the next generation of the workforce. And it’s not hard to see why these skills are yet again so prominent in our vision of the future.
But, with the requirements for leaders of the present and of the future ever-changing, how can learning and development teams be expected to develop the leaders we need?
With an expectation on leaders to be performing and transforming simultaneously, adaptability becomes the crux of the leadership of the future. Data shows that companies prioritising agile, empathetic leadership are better positioned to navigate change, with topics like low-data decision-making and prioritising the skill of planning helping to build flexibility. This agile mindset should be foundational to leadership development, preparing people to respond, prioritise, and excel
with situational attentiveness.
And that attentiveness is as important as adaptability. Future leaders can recognise not only the critical role they play in employee well-being, stress levels, and mental health but also the real-time impact of their actions. Empathy drives connection which drives trust, all of which is essential to working towards a shared goal and fostering innovation in what is otherwise an innately competitive world. For this reason, leadership development that grounds itself in self-awareness and connected experiences should become more prominent. Understanding (not just recognising) personal impact. Valuing (not just building) diverse teams. Establishing (not just highlighting) community at work.
What about innovation? That is, after all, the driving force behind transformation. In reality, both of the previous areas can also contribute here. Developing agility — underpinned by principles like “learn by regular reflection” — encourages experimentation and seeking out new ways of doing things while maintaining a focus on both speed and efficacy. Empathetic leadership ultimately seeks to empower, giving individual contributors, managers, and even other leaders the freedom to pursue paths previously unexplored along the road to one unified goal.
So, what is next? To a degree, all of the above. Our leaders must be hybrid. And inclusive. And visionary. And agile. And transformational. But, as always, they don’t have to do it all on their own. That’s what we’re here for. To transform learning experiences, accelerate performance, and support people as they step towards a new vision of work. To share the responsibility for building the leaders of the future.